The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad

"It's our game...America's game: it has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere-belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly as our Constitution's laws, [and] is just as important in the sum total of our historic life."-Walt Whitman on baseball

Is the face of American baseball throughout the world that of goodwill ambassador or ugly American? Has baseball crafted its own image or instead been at the mercy of broader forces shaping our society and the globe? The...